Parc marin du Saguenay - Saint-Laurent, Groupe de recherche et d'éducation sur les mammifères marins, GREMM, excursions aux baleines, bélugas, Tadoussac, règlementation, ArcCatalog, ArcMap. / L'important volume des excursions de bateaux touristiques liées aux activités d'observation en mer des mammifères marins (AOM) dans le Parc marin Saguenay-Saint-Laurent (PMSSL) pourrait avoir un impact négatif sur la santé des baleines qui fréquentent cette région de l’estuaire du fleuve Saint-Laurent. Cette situation a poussé les gestionnaires du Parc à désirer un outil d'information et de gestion pour mieux suivre l’évolution des AOM. Le présent mémoire décrit la conception de cet outil en proposant un modèle de l'excursion et des activités d'observation qui sert à l’élaboration d’une base de données. En s’appuyant sur le concept de la trajectoire spatiotemporelle, utilisée pour l'étude du comportement de déplacement basé sur l'activité, et sur le concept de l'objet mobile, développé en géomatique, notre modèle de données permet de reproduire graphiquement les trajectoires des excursions et l'enchaînement des activités qui ont lieu au cours de celles-ci. Le modèle est orienté objet et implanté dans une Geodatabase, une base de données relationnelle exploitable par le système d'information géographique (SIG) ArcGIS. Les objets de la base de données sont créés à partir des données de trois années de suivi des AOM réalisés par le Groupe de recherche et d'éducation sur les mammifères marins (GREMM). Nous montrons que le SIG peut exploiter la base de données de façon à répondre correctement aux besoins en information exprimés par les gestionnaires et que la représentation informatique des excursions sous la forme de trajectoires spatiotemporelles ouvre de nouvelles avenues de recherche sur les patrons d’activités et le comportement de déplacement des bateaux. / The considerable volume of commercial boat trips associated with whale-watching activities (WWAs) in the Saguenay-Saint-Laurent National Marine Park (PMSSL) may have negative impacts on the health of the whales visiting the Saint-Lawrence River estuary. This situation has led park officials to seek an appropriate information management system in order to better monitor WWAs. This paper contributes to the design of such a tool by modeling excursion patterns of WWAs, resulting in a database. Based on the space-time path concept used for the study of activity-based travel behavior as well as the mobile-object geomatical concept, our data-model enables us to plot the trajectories of the excursions and the sequence of activities taking place during those excursions. The model is object-oriented and built into a Geodatabase (an ArcGis-processable relational database). The objects in the database are based on data collected by the Marine Mammal Research and Education Group (GREMM) during a three-year WWA monitoring program. Finally, this report demonstrates that geographic information systems can be effectively used to process the database in a way that serves the needs of park officials, and that the representation of excursion data in a GIS opens up new avenues for research on the space-time pattern of observation activities and the travel behavior of boats.

L'important volume des excursions de bateaux touristiques liées aux activités d'observation en mer des mammifères marins (AOM) dans le Parc marin Saguenay-Saint-Laurent (PMSSL) pourrait avoir un impact négatif sur la santé des baleines qui fréquentent cette région de l’estuaire du fleuve Saint-Laurent. Cette situation a poussé les gestionnaires du Parc à désirer un outil d'information et de gestion pour mieux suivre l’évolution des AOM. Le présent mémoire décrit la conception de cet outil en proposant un modèle de l'excursion et des activités d'observation qui sert à l’élaboration d’une base de données. En s’appuyant sur le concept de la trajectoire spatiotemporelle, utilisée pour l'étude du comportement de déplacement basé sur l'activité, et sur le concept de l'objet mobile, développé en géomatique, notre modèle de données permet de reproduire graphiquement les trajectoires des excursions et l'enchaînement des activités qui ont lieu au cours de celles-ci. Le modèle est orienté objet et implanté dans une Geodatabase, une base de données relationnelle exploitable par le système d'information géographique (SIG) ArcGIS. Les objets de la base de données sont créés à partir des données de trois années de suivi des AOM réalisés par le Groupe de recherche et d'éducation sur les mammifères marins (GREMM). Nous montrons que le SIG peut exploiter la base de données de façon à répondre correctement aux besoins en information exprimés par les gestionnaires et que la représentation informatique des excursions sous la forme de trajectoires spatiotemporelles ouvre de nouvelles avenues de recherche sur les patrons d’activités et le comportement de déplacement des bateaux. / The considerable volume of commercial boat trips associated with whale-watching activities (WWAs) in the Saguenay-Saint-Laurent National Marine Park (PMSSL) may have negative impacts on the health of the whales visiting the Saint-Lawrence River estuary. This situation has led park officials to seek an appropriate information management system in order to better monitor WWAs. This paper contributes to the design of such a tool by modeling excursion patterns of WWAs, resulting in a database. Based on the space-time path concept used for the study of activity-based travel behavior as well as the mobile-object geomatical concept, our data-model enables us to plot the trajectories of the excursions and the sequence of activities taking place during those excursions. The model is object-oriented and built into a Geodatabase (an ArcGis-processable relational database). The objects in the database are based on data collected by the Marine Mammal Research and Education Group (GREMM) during a three-year WWA monitoring program. Finally, this report demonstrates that geographic information systems can be effectively used to process the database in a way that serves the needs of park officials, and that the representation of excursion data in a GIS opens up new avenues for research on the space-time pattern of observation activities and the travel behavior of boats. / Parc marin du Saguenay - Saint-Laurent, Groupe de recherche et d'éducation sur les mammifères marins, GREMM, excursions aux baleines, bélugas, Tadoussac, règlementation, ArcCatalog, ArcMap.

This diploma thesis has been focused on the relationship of pupils in the 1. -3. grade of elementary school to the contemporary fairy tales. The theoretical part of my work is focused on the fairy tale as a genre (classic folk and modern fairy tale), on the media influence of the fairy tale, on its current status, development trends, the influence of recipient etc. My work has an investigative character too. It has been focused on the reading behavior of pupils, their behavior, the influence of family and school, on the development of reading, respectively focusing on this genre, on the influence of media etc. Based on questionnaires and interviews with pupils and their parents I will try to capture the current status. The research results are compared with the theoretical part and are supported with the attachment. The results are interpreted in the conclusion.

Ambivalent Ecologies: Representations of the Nonhuman in African American Literature, 1830-1940, argues that nonhuman animals and ecological phenomena are central to the projects undertaken by African American authors from the antebellum slave narrative through the interwar period. In four chapters that focus on the Anglophone literature of nineteenth century abolition, the late nineteenth-century conjure tales of Charles W. Chesnutt, Jean Toomer’s Cane, and Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God, I contend that there are as many differences in how these authors marshal the nonhuman as there are similarities. Following this insight, I tease out the unevenness and tensions in these representations across the tradition. Tracing the influence of literary genre and historical developments on representations of the nonhuman, I contend that these mark a site or perhaps a vector of profound ambivalence. Pushing beyond paradigms that reflexively position the work of black creative intellectuals as always already critical of Western liberal humanism, I offer a more nuanced set of close-readings that stay with the trouble of what I theorize as the ecological ambivalence that animates African American literature’s relationship toward the colonial categories the Human, or Man. Drawing on the work of Sylvia Wynter, Zakiyyah Jackson, Frantz Fanon, and others, I position this ambivalence as a key feature of the ecology of African American life.

This dissertation argues that Nella Larsen, Tess Slesinger, and Jane Bowles, in a set of novels published between 1928 and 1943, all deployed laughter—not humor or comedy, but laughter itself—to express a critique of the rigid prescription of female subjectivity. In a historical window of epistemic instability, between the earlier dominance of humanist individualism and the subsequent dominance of humanist universalism, these authors reacted against nominally liberatory political movements, such as first-wave feminism and Black “uplift,” that had not in fact challenged an ideal of the sovereign subject still modeled on the white male Euro-American individual. Their objections anticipated, by several decades, later critiques of the subject that emerged in second-wave feminism and post-structuralist theory. Laughter, as Larsen, Slesinger, and Bowles understood, reckons with difference, and not only identitarian difference: when we laugh, we recognize someone or something as different, other, and differently different, otherly other—not a defined other, but a fresh challenge to discursive taxonomy. Moreover, when we laugh, experiencing a material overthrow of subjective control, we encounter the otherness, the multiplicity, of the self ever different from itself. Laughter thus opens the self to difference, inside and out. But the “subversive” force of the laughter of the oppressed can also be coopted and reabsorbed by a dominant social order. This project takes up Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God (1937) as a case study in the limits of the “subversive,” before turning to Larsen’s Quicksand (1928), Slesinger’s The Unpossessed (1934), and Bowles’ Two Serious Ladies (1943) as exemplars of a more radical laughing objection to the prescription of subjectivity, and to the dualisms that undergird the subject’s construction: self and other, oppression and resistance, mind and body, thought and feeling, depth and surface. The latter novels laugh a “laughter of the middle”: a materially situated, present laughter, living in the in-between spaces of dialectical discourse; a laughter of the here and now, the ever-shifting ground of a self in pieces.

Avitourism (birding) in South Africa, with remarkable birdlife, provides economic, social and conservation opportunities. Globally, bird species are decreasing rapidly due to environmental degradation and climate change. The dependence of avitourism on natural resources is undisputable, urging further research. Avitourism research is embryonic compared to higher-order tourism markets (i.e. naturebased) and under-researched in the southern hemisphere. Despite increased international scholarship, substantial knowledge gaps remain regarding strategies to enhance sustainable avitourism. Education, encouraging changes in environmental behaviour, is essential to solve environmental problems. The current day learners influence the future state of the natural environment and consequently the sustainability of avitourism in South Africa. The research therefore aimed to develop a literacy model for sustainable avitourism aimed at secondary school learners in Gauteng (South Africa). In phase 1 of the methodological procedure, mechanisms facilitating behavioural change towards nature were explored. A conceptual literacy framework for sustainable avitourism was developed in phase 2 (theoretical contribution). Phase 3, consisted empirical research. Multi-stage sampling was used to collect primary data by distributing questionnaires at 17 purposively selected secondary schools in Gauteng from July to October 2014. The data were obtained from n = 5 488 secondary school learners (aged 13–17). Descriptive statistics provided insight into ‘environmental and avitourism literacy’ of the learners. Exploratory- and confirmatory factor analyses (EFA; CFA) and structural equation modelling (SEM) were employed to test the conceptual literacy framework. Obtaining the primary objective, a literacy model for sustainable avitourism was developed and confirmed (empirical contribution). Critical paths were identified in the model to enhance the likelihood of behavioural change. The literacy model could be useful for environmental education and avitourism roleplayers, assisting in curriculum development and evaluation (practical contribution). This model could also be applied to other educational contexts, including art and music. Bird education teaches a love for birds and nature, leading to conservation and sustained birdlife, to ensure avitourism attractions in the future. The development of sustainable avitourism intervention programmes is suggested for further research. Longitudinal research could evaluate the effects of the intervention programmes.Ultimately, the learners of today are the responsible citizens and tourists of tomorrow. / Abstract in English, Sesotho and Afrikaans / Transport, Logistics and Tourism / D.Phil. (Management Studies)